A Zipcar-branded Ford, coming to a campus near you. (Photo: Courtesy of Zipcar)

It's back-to-school season, everyone, in case you haven't noticed on your daily commute yet. My colleagues at TBD have focused on many different aspects of this experience, with photo galleries, a look at school menus, and more. But school also naturally affects transit. Suddenly our morning sidewalks, Metro trains, and roads are filled with students, equipped with their backpacks, messenger bags, and bright-eyed innocence.

Zipcar recognizes the new school year, too, and the car-sharing company has just announced a new two-year partnership with Ford Motor Company that will be targeting more than 250 universities to encourage students to join and use Zipcar. Locally, American University, GW, and George Mason will be participating. It makes sense that Ford would want to be involved given how Zipcar has branded itself as fuel-efficient and environmentally conscious as it has. Zipcar and Ford emphasize how much this initiative will reduce congestion and emissions as college-age drivers embrace Zipcar. Executive chairman Bill Ford has given a TED talk on the problems of congestion and how to reduce it over the coming decades, and this partnership fits perfectly with his sensibilities.

What does this new partnership entail?

• Zipcar's fleet will acquire a lot of Ford vehicles — 650 or so throughout this academic year and up to a thousand over the course of the two-year partnership. Most of these vehicles will be Ford Focus and Ford Escape 2012 models. These cars get 40 miles to the gallon on the highway, which is not too shabby at all given today's gas prices.

• Students will have a financial incentive to join Zipcar as a result of this new partnership. According to Zipcar's press materials, they'll get "$10 off the $35 annual membership fee for the first 100,000 new University members who sign up for Zipcar, plus $1 off the hourly rate for the first 1 million hours of use on any of the new Ford vehicles at select colleges and universities."

• The new vehicles will start arriving on campuses this week.

The partnership gives Zipcar, founded in 2000 and now the largest car-sharing company in the world, yet another edge in the car-sharing market, both in D.C. and beyond. Its power in D.C. will likely become even more entrenched as it begins to even more pointedly targeting college-aged drivers. Could Zipcar be pursuing a better demographic? Many students, especially those who come to the District, don't bring cars with them but still would benefit from some occasional driving. Zipcar is also a relatively inexpensive option, especially factoring in the new student discounts.

Last week, Zipcar already gained close to 4,000 new Zipcar customers in the District thanks to a killer LivingSocial deal. How many new young drivers will they tap now? Good luck to any of the car-sharing competition on the way to the area. They'll need it.